For Games Unplayed and Unknown

When the gods of the four elements began to battle, Econ, the Elemental Master, summoned them to his arena so they could fight without destroying the world. “Defeat me, or defeat each other,” Econ demanded. “I don’t care which occurs.” That’s a weirdly non-committal command to gods engaged in a battle to the death.

Econ’s Arena allows you to win both ways. But like Econ, the game is noncommittal about it too. Neither option gives a solid reason to play the strategy game through to the end – although its alluringly busy, colorful appearance certainly provides a reason to start. Econ’s Arena » Read more

Eric Roffman had a Ph.D in theoretical physics, and he wanted to make games. After working on an interactive LaserDisc poker title, Roffman looked for a way to combine his interests in science, games, computer graphics, and film. So in 1990, he started Personal Media Interactive, a company that would develop “projects that looked at the future, or combined gaming with interesting ideas, including a number of games designed to be both intelligent and entertainment.”1

They would make “intellitainment,” as they awkwardly dubbed it, multimedia games for adults.

Intellitainment began and ended with their only title, Millennium Auction. As the title suggests, it’s an auction game, a genre Millennium Auction basically made up. Auctions have an unpredictable, suspenseful rhythm, so Roffman planned a game around them as a way to experiment with a variable, randomized narrative in a speculative setting.1

The game certainly delivers way more intrigue than I expected from a virtual auction with nothing at stake. Chance plays a major part in that, though, and it raises questions about the role of randomness as a narrative tool. Millennium Auction » Read more

A string of events this month reminded me of the continued importance of making historical games available for anyone to play. I hammer on this point a lot, but the challenges and possibilities have been especially clear lately.

Last month, a university history professor researching the French Caribbean contacted me to learn more about Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness. I helped them set up an Amiga emulator; until then, they hadn’t been able to play the game themselves and didn’t know they could.

For most people, playing old games and software presents a unique challenge.

Some films and books come in a peculiar format. A novel like S. comes with dozens of pieces and inserts, and it can’t exist only as a PDF. David Lynch’s short film Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) was meant to be projected onto sculptures. At the risk of oversimplifying, these are, for the most part, exceptions. Most every electronic device today can stream a movie, and nobody needs specialized or expensive equipment for that.

Software, meanwhile, is entirely dependent on format. A game designed for the Nintendo 64 will only run on a Nintendo 64. A computer game might rely on a specific graphics card that hasn’t been manufactured in decades. To play an older game, you need to have the old system or know how to use an emulator.

Earlier this week, Nintendo announced the Super NES Classic, a limited-run console that emulates Super Nintendo games. It costs $80, plugs right into most TVs, and works out of the box. Although we don’t know how closely it mimics an actual Super Nintendo, it’s a boon for people who might not have much experience with games and want to play notable titles from Nintendo’s back catalog without researching emulation software or wading into the costly game collecting market where a copy of EarthBound costs hundreds of dollars. But those people probably won’t be able to buy it in a year. Nintendo super-fans and nostalgists will devour this thing and cause it to sell out instantly; they’ve also been the first ones to decry it as inauthentic compared to owning the original hardware.

Asking people to use original hardware is impractical. Beyond availability issues and the price barrier, outside of a library, archive, or museum, we can’t expect someone to make room for a Windows 95 desktop computer or to figure out how to plug an out-of-date video cable into their home A/V system if they want to play a game that came out over ten years ago.

And as it stands now, the emulation route often isn’t more convenient. Assuming you know to seek out emulation software at all, setting it up can demand hours of experimentation, sifting through message forum posts, and browsing sketchy emulation websites. DOSBox, the de facto standard for DOS computer emulation, still uses arcane text-based settings, leaving third-party programs like D-Fend Reloaded to work around its major usability issues. I’ve spent days of my life configuring a PlayStation emulator, and it still isn’t perfect. How does a curious person without time, money, or technical skills address those problems? More thoughts on emulation and the access barrier » Read more

Painting can be a meditative experience, like in the shareware art program Music Brush. Child-friendly art software was hardly rare in the 90s, and Music Brush stands apart by focusing on the process – painting, motion, the rhythm of your brush – instead of the end result. Music Brush is all about how music interacts with that performance side of art, either in the form of an animation you can watch or as a way to collect your thoughts. Music Brush » Read more

In Space Invaders, sometimes a UFO will fly past the top of the screen as a bonus target. Although Solarian II is also set in space, the bonus target is a stork.

Solarian II has a weird sense of humor. The game isn’t particularly wild, but it does get about as odd as it can while still looking and acting like a space shoot-em-up. That limits how seriously you can take the game, for the better, and quietly reminds you to have fun. Solarian II » Read more

Today kicks off Macintosh Week on The Obscuritory! May 13th is the anniversary of the release of Apple’s System 7 operating system, which added color to the Macintosh interface. It’s an arbitrary holiday and good enough reason to do a special week.

Like the Galapagos Islands, the Macintosh gaming ecosystem evolved independently. The Mac kindled a unique, silly community willing to experiment and play with the platform’s quirks, like its high resolution, early support for color graphics and multimedia, and the first widely available computer mouse. Coincidentally, this week the gaming podcast Retronauts released an episode about the early years of the Macintosh if you want to hear more about early Mac history. (And stay tuned for Richard Moss’s book next year!)

Here’s a confession: over a decade ago, in a former life, I helped run a Mario fangame website. By the time I left around 2008, the community’s tools and skills had grown enough that they could make imitation Mario games that looked and played close to the originals. But the early years were when the real magic happened. The fangames from those days shared more with outsider art than Super Mario World. Their creators had no game design experience, an excess of ambition, and absolutely nothing in their way.

From that clamor emerged Legacy Of The Golden Hammer by Jacob Dean Martin, age 14 (according to the game’s About screen), alias Dr. Wario. What starts out as a shoddy Mario fangame quickly turns into an unchecked stream-of-consciousness power fantasy that spirals so far out of control it inspires wonder. Legacy Of The Golden Hammer » Read more

We went over five different programs spanning the full range of cooking software, from recipe databases to tailored multimedia showcases. What made for a better program? And perhaps most critically, was the food any good? Let’s compare… Cooking with Windows recap » Read more

How would you improve Snake? The classic formula doesn’t really need much else. Would you add powerups? A hundred levels? A sci-fi makeover? Competitive multiplayer? Do all of them, and that’s Heroes. Heroes » Read more

In 1991, Denise Caruso founded Digital Media, a newsletter covering the then-nascent multimedia industry. Caruso’s newsletter is a great read if you want a ground-level view of the early years of multimedia and the CD-ROM format.

Caruso used to provide issues of the newsletter through her website, which currently isn’t online. For easier access, I’m uploading them to the Internet Archive. Browse through the collection so far here. They’re a treasure trove, especially the “I/O” editorials, which feature comments from notable figures like game developer Chris Crawford, Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, and Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe.

The September 1991 issue is particular interesting; it discusses Spaceship Warlock, the Voyager Company, the expected future of the Philips CD-i, and Brøderbund’s strategy for producing inexpensive multimedia content. Paul Saffo compares interface challenges faced by early developers to an “electronic piñata,” an unwieldy but fun metaphor. (I had previously featured this issue in an old post I’ve removed for quality and accuracy reasons.)

When completed, the collection will have all 30 issues Caruso edited. It’ll take a bit, and I’ll update once it’s ready!